Maleo Laos food

Out of town, on a concrete concourse, amid ill-fed and life-weary pot plants, comes some glorious Lao food at the Malee restaurant, from a menu titled ‘Luang Prabang Novrishment’. It’s divided into - unintentionally entertaining - sections, such as ‘Cutting up into small pieces’. With dishes such as ‘Boiled the fish with the big onion’; ‘Stuffing fist and cappage’; ‘Grinded crap pepper sauce’; ‘Soft-boiled pig entrails salad’, and to drink - ‘Picked drug alcohols 11 Tiger brand’. Reads like some ‘wanted column’ cannibal’s private dining dungeon credentials. Smells fantastic. The drug leafy thing sounds good - and we down eggcupfuls of a musty whisky-like brew. On the food front, I go for greens with a caramel dipping sauce, pungent with paa-daek. An elderly Thai henparty arrives, scoffs, and is gone - and before we’ve caught a whiff of our firsts. Then comes ‘chicken laap’ (minced chicken and banana flower salad), and then banana leaf steamed fish on the bone, a muddy-sweet dab hooked fresh from the Mekong and now stacked with dill. On opening it’s a pulp of bones and flesh and so, like a mouthful of stickleback, a minefield to eat but gorgeous still, with its perfume of dill, kaffir lime and ginger. Cutting up into small pieces: here makes for less fast-food and more slow-food eating. Pass the crap pepper sauce. And more picked drugs please, before I face the stuffing fist. Cheers’.